1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of and system for processing information relating to the execution of instructions by a database management system (DBMS).
2. Description of the Related Art
Database management systems manage the storage, modification and retrieval of data in a database. This involves the execution of instructions received from a variety of sources, including, for example processes executing within or externally to the database management system. For example, such an instruction may be in the form of a database query, which is used to retrieve data from a database. A database query may be in text form, typically formulated as a statement in a database query language. The database management system parses the statement, executes the query defined by the statement, and outputs the results of the query.
Databases can be large and complex, and the execution of queries can often require significant computing resources. To enable optimisation of databases and of application software interacting with those databases, database users and/or operators often require performance statistics and other information relating to the execution of database queries and other database instructions. Some database management systems therefore provide facilities for measuring the performance of the system in executing queries. However, in a complex system, where a large number of queries and other instructions are executed, the volume of performance data generated can be large, and meaningful analysis of the data is often difficult.
The present invention seeks to alleviate some of these problems.